There has always been a department of education in the Turkish administration, but it has never amounted to anything until now. The present minister is an earnest, ambitious, conscientious man, who realizes the illiterate condition of the people and the importance of education. And he has begun the organization of a free public school system throughout the entire empire, to be supported by local taxation, with subsidies from the imperial treasury. The parliament appropriated $4,300,000 for the year 1910, of which one sixth was paid to private schools and the remainder was allotted to public educational institutions and the free public schools throughout the empire. It is expected that this amount will be increased gradually year by year as the revenues will permit. The spirit shown by members of Parliament promises generous grants in the future.
D. J. Mahmoud Bey, the inspector general of public instruction, told me that there would be about 65,000 elementary public schools in operation throughout the Turkish Empire before the end of 1910, and that number will be increased as rapidly as possible. The greatest difficulty is to get teachers. Indeed, that is the only obstacle to the extension of the system. Mahmoud Bey says the inhabitants of the various provinces are “crazy” for schools, and are willing to pay any amount of taxes within their power to secure them. But there are no teachers to be had. The salaries that can be allowed will not tempt educated men away from other professions and there are so few educated women in the country that it is almost impossible to find instructors for the girls’ schools. Mohammedan girls cannot attend mixed schools and cannot be taught by men.
“We have just started two large normal schools in Constantinople for the education of teachers,” said Mahmoud Bey, “and will establish others in the provinces as rapidly as possible. It will be at least two years and probably three years before any of the students from these schools will be available for teachers, and in the meantime we will have to do the best we can. We are getting some teachers from the American missionary schools in different parts of Turkey, although they are, of course, reluctant to let their teachers go. We are placing promising young men and women in all the American institutions, to be educated at government expense. We have five government students in the American College for Girls at Scutari. We shall have as many or more young men in Robert College at the opening of the fall term. We have already sent 150 students to Vienna, Paris, Berlin, Geneva and other European educational centres at government expense. These young men are selected from the most promising students in our high schools. We will send more next year. We expect to send twenty-five, perhaps fifty, young men to America to be educated. We like the American system of education very much, but in the organization of our public schools we are adopting the German and Swiss systems rather than the American because it is more easily applied.
“There is a great educational renaissance in Turkey,” continued Mahmoud Bey. “The deputies of our parliament are here every day demanding more schools for their constituents. One of them who was in this morning said that the people in his province were ‘actually screaming for schools.’ The deputy from Mesopotamia has just sent me a copy of a speech he has recently made in approval of our efforts and promising his earnest support for us in the future.”
The appropriations for 1910 were divided as follows—a piaster being five cents in American money:
| Piasters. | |
| Subventions to primary schools | 20,000,000 |
| Subventions to secondary schools | 12,000,000 |
| Government primary schools | 3,000,000 |
| Government lyceums | 3,000,000 |
| Government normal schools | 2,453,820 |
| Subventions to provincial normal schools | 3,000,000 |
| Subventions to provincial lyceums | 4,000,000 |
| University of Constantinople | 2,928,816 |
| Agricultural schools | 3,636,000 |
| Medical schools | 8,502,200 |
| Schools of music and art | 1,030,000 |
| Technical schools | 7,839,000 |
| Schools of commerce | 2,670,120 |
| Students in private schools | 5,190,000 |
The several military academies are supported from the appropriations for the war department. The provincial schools referred to in the above table are situated in forty or fifty of the largest centres of population in the different provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The lyceums are what we call high or preparatory schools. Schools of commerce are what we call commercial colleges where modern languages, bookkeeping, typewriting, stenography, and other accomplishments required in a business career are taught.
The Ottoman Imperial University was established in Stamboul, the native part of Constantinople, by the ex-sultan, Abdul Hamid, in 1904, with six departments—law, medicine, politics, theology, literature, and natural sciences. It was a concession to the orthodox and loyal families of the Moslem faith who were determined that their sons should have a liberal education, but were reluctant to send them to the American missionary colleges or to the European universities. Hundreds of Turkish young men have been going to the universities of Paris, Geneva, Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest, and at those institutions have acquired liberal and revolutionary doctrines which made them dangerous to the despotism. Abdul Hamid was opposed to education in every form, particularly among the middle and lower classes of his subjects, because it made them troublesome and discontented, but he threw a tub to the whale, as it were, by starting a university of his own about four years before his downfall. It did not amount to much under his reign, but since the Young Turks came into power it has branched out considerably and promises to be an institution of importance.
There are now about twenty-five hundred students in the various departments, and a faculty of two hundred professors, most of them competent men, but only a few have had experience in instruction. For the year 1910, the appropriation for the support of the university was three million piasters, which is equivalent to $150,000 in American money—a sum that is ample to meet the present demands.
The university occupies the former palace of Kiamil Pasha, near the mosque of Sultan Bayazid, on one of the highest and best positions in the city. While the building is not at all adapted to the purpose, it is a costly and highly decorated mansion, and when the Cheragan Palace, occupied by the parliament, was burned in 1909, it was proposed to turn out the university and use the Kiamil Palace as a parliament house. Fortunately the minister of public education was able to head off the plan, because he would have found it very difficult to find even so good, or so poor a place in Constantinople for the institution. Plans have been made for a new building to cost five million dollars, but it will be a long time before the Turkish treasury can afford such an expenditure.